Lost-and-Found Housing

(written on 11 May, Fri - didn't have internet till this week. didn't have a blog till today)

We’re charming the socks off all the property agents in shanghai…

Or so it seems. Or maybe they’re all just really friendly and helpful.

Ok this is going to be a long post cos I finally decided to just bring my own laptop to work so I can just take my own sweet time to type this out.

We went to sleep on Weds night having decided to move in to the apartment with 4 others and leave pam to find her own accommodation… and then at like 2/3am they called to suggest that we try and find another apartment together with a nus friend of theirs who was also looking!

And just like that, ta-da, the housing problem was resurrected :( had planned to move on thurs night and now instead, we’d have to go house hunting AGAIN… and because now our budget and requirements were different, we’d have to see a whole set of new houses. But the good thing is that now we can at least include pam and we won’t feel bad for leaving her in the lurch. The problem though is that it’s hard to share a place with 3 girls and 1 guy and the guy’s staying one month less than the rest of us!

So the entire day we were just stressing and worrying over this but I guess… it gave us more to do at work? It was a bit worrying though cos I called one of the housing agents again in the morning (who by now can recognize my voice… must be cos of the broken Chinese…) and another in the afternoon and then we didn’t hear anything from them the rest of the day so we thought they hadn’t found anything! We were getting quite panicky so I msged za to pray for me and she did so immediately over sms… aww so sweet, made me feel loads better!! :)

Fortunately when I called the first one again after work they DID have places for us to view! *phew! So we met up with agent Calrry who’d taken us to see some places on tues night too, and his boss Jerry who’s the one I’d contacted initially. Apparently Jerry was just intrigued by us and came along to meet us since he was free and curious to meet us after all the phone calls. What are we… zoo animals or something?! But anyway the best thing about them was that they were confident of finding us a place for 3 months… I don’t know what they’re going to do to convince the landlords but they just said to leave it to them so heh heh ok lor their problem, at least it’s one less thing for us to worry about!

The first one we saw was a bit too small and old and bare. But for the second one… we were pretty sold on it before we’d even seen it! Cos it sounded like it suited our requirements – 2 rms, furniture newer than the place we’d just seen, and the location was central. A bit far from our office but the others are working elsewhere so compromise lor. And we were super determined to find a place by the end of the night cos we really felt bad imposing on NG and his housemates any further! So yah unless the roof was caving in or anything, we were pretty determined to take it!

And yep… it turned out perfect! It had all the basic furniture, most of it was quite new and presentable and clean! One room has a queen size bed, the other had a sofa bed. And then smart me realized that the sofa in the first bedroom was also a sofa bed so we cld put both in the other room and we wldn’t need to add a mattress or bed even! (which we’d expected to have to do) So yayyyyy we were so happy we were practically dancing around the apartment and we took the place on the spot! Calrry was so amused. And then he was like “heyyy wait! You haven’t even asked me what the rent is yet!!” But actually we had. We’d asked him on the way over but I guess he’d forgotten and it was within our budget! So yah we’re taking it and we don’t care about what the other 2 think cos they should be pretty desperate by now and hey we’re doing all the tiring leg work k. But anyway the apartment’s nice so they should be satisfied. Not sure if it’ll be what they’ll expect, but after all the many many apartments we’ve seen, we know that this is pretty much about as good as we can get for our budget! And it’s on the second floor so it’s only one flight of stairs for us to bump our luggage up! :P

The location’s just off an expat/ touristy area so it’s pretty safe. (it’s the pub and clubbing area actually. Haha. Wait till I tell jk he’s gonna be sooo jealous.) A bit atas also but I think our side is the ‘poorer’ region already. For the previous apartment, I told my parents it would be like working in Clarke Quay and traveling to Yishun to work. Now it’s the other way round! We’re living in Clarke Quay and traveling to like Outram to work!

Having settled this finally (just need the landlord to confirm now and we can move in tonight hopefully!) we were in a happy mood and wanted to go eat dinner. So Calrry helped us find a place to eat and so we invited him to join us lah and then along the way while talking and everything he must have thought we were really broke cos we didn’t have enough money to pay the reservation fee so he had to lower it for us and we’re 4 sharing a 3500 apartment when the other friends of ours which they helped were 3 ppl sharing a 4000 apartment. Yah so then he insisted on treating us to dinner but we felt bad so we treated him to dessert and then when he paid for drinks after that, he only let me pay him back with a S$2 note haha cos he collects foreign currency.

Good thing we settled this and raised our spirits cos when I got back I had an email from my mum. The Parents are in Krabi and they sound like they’re having more fun than me lah! Snorkelling and trekking and taking hot baths… wah. If I was still homeless I think I would have just taken a plane over to join them upon reading that!

And then The Stupid Sister of mine had to go rub it in that my room had no rabbit and hers did. BAH. But oh well at least she seems to be taking care of him which is more than she usually does.

Ok so although the place is settled, today’s extra-work challenge is how to get the money to pay off the full sum later! We don’t have enough cash and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to withdraw that much once off.. Hope so!